Risen
by Daughter of Malkav
Summary: Dracula in Hell. My very first Van Helsing fic, so comments and criticism very welcome!


Disclaimer: Nope I don't own Van Helsing, or Dracula, or just about diddly- squat.   
  
Hell was a lot darker than he remembered. It was less a fire burning from the depths and more the turning of a page into quiet emptiness. He would describe what he was feeling, if he was indeed feeling anything as a coldness seeping in passed undead flesh and into the marrow of his bones. Was it...loneliness? He barked on the edge of laughter that rose in his throat and loosed it on the silent world. Nothing. Not a sound to break the monotony; though it should echo into the darkness, each harsh note a declaration of frantic existence.  
  
How can one be trapped in ether? Do not bonds require a body? Dracula had been many things in life, but incorporeal had not been one of them. He contemplated whether or not this ought to worry him. He was not some bit player to be written off so easily. They had killed him before, but had risen again. Stronger. And now they were ignoring him. Perhaps this is what frustrated him most of all. Their hate, their schemes he thrived on their pathetic thrashing in the tight coils he wound around them.  
  
They needed him. They could not leave him here! Who would be evil if there was not Dracula. Who would teach the villagers to fear the dark and what it was to be hunted like the deer they bagged as prey. The hart, running with the pounding of a human's footstep, farther into the woods, eyes flickering back, rolling with terror.  
  
He smiles with the memory, or he thinks he does. Uncertainty. He hates it. Life was a game, death was a joke and this...How does one deal with nonexistence? You can't laugh at it and move on, as he did when the foolish gypsies came with their stakes. Their holy water burning with a faith he could surpass with a mocking laugh. It is easy to believe in God when one has dealt with the devil.  
  
The devil. He was owed his due wasn't he? After all of this, who would pay him for his failure. Perhaps that is what this was. A fitting punishment for someone who even in death had clung to life. But then to return to half life and then to this. To nothing. What was the point of Hell if there was to be no reckoning? Fire he could endure. Had endured. The burning made him feel alive as his cries of agony sweetened the pain to a crescendo of vitality. That was living even in death..  
  
Sometimes he wondered if he could cry. There wasn't really much opportunity to find out. Pointless as it was in humans, surely it was wasted on him. His brides wept all of the time. Crocodile tears, but they amused him. And wasn't that the purpose of everything? The castle, the children, Van Helsing...except the blasted cold kept finding its way in.  
  
He was stronger then this. He did not understand how something so simple wormed its way inside and ate away at his unfeeling heart. He had always hated the cold.  
  
"I am Dracula! I have laughed in the face of God and cheated Death more times then human memory can count! I am here!"  
  
And the world opened up. There was no other way to describe it, as if the lid of darkness was raised up and light poured into the emptiness. He stood frozen, he had legs now, though they seemed rubbery and hardly supported his weight. He straightened. Whoever had come for him would not find him cowering like a cornered animal, blinded by the light.  
  
He raised a hand to his eyes. There was a figure standing on the edge, looking in on him, too dark to make out, he could hear the beat of their heart against the pounding in his ears, counterpoint.  
  
"Has God come down to laugh at me? Are you the Devil come to make another bargain?"  
  
Still the figure said nothing.  
  
"Who are you? To pay my death price? Answer me, who are you?"  
  
The figure moved forward, honey colored hair blown in the nonexistent breeze and violet crystalline eyes widening in my amusement. "I have come to take you back. And I am....MARY SUE!"  
  
Dracula stared at her, in her perfect loveliness and his mouth opened in horror. "Noooooooooo!" 


End file.
